Thin content is the oldest quality problem in search and the one that keeps coming back, because the incentive that creates it never goes away: more URLs look like more coverage. This check asks whether a page earns its place — enough words, enough structure, enough that is not boilerplate. The scores land low, and a large part of that is category and tag pages, which exist for navigation and get judged as content.
Here is where that sits. The median is 36/100, which ranks it 21 of the 25 measures in this dataset. The middle half of results falls between 26 and 87 — a band 61 points wide. That is wide: sites genuinely diverge here, which is to say getting ahead is still possible.
How the scores are distributed
An average on its own misleads. The chart below splits all 1,437 scans into five score bands, totalling 100%. Scores collect at both ends and hollow out in the middle — the mark of a check that has either been done or not done at all, with little partial credit in between.
- 0–19
- 20–39
- 40–59
- 60–79
- 80–100
| Score band | Thin Content |
|---|---|
| 0–19 | 16% · 229 |
| 20–39 | 37% · 536 |
| 40–59 | 17% · 246 |
| 60–79 | 2% · 25 |
| 80–100 | 28% · 401 |
| Total runs | 1,437 |
The grade mix
The same data as letters: A+ 95–100, A 85–94, B 75–84, C 65–74, D 50–64 and F below 50.
Where your score stands
A low score is not automatically a problem; it is a question. Some pages are legitimately short — a contact page, a pricing table, a definition. What matters is whether a short page is short because that is the right length for it, or short because nobody finished it. The tool cannot tell those apart, and you can.
| Tool | 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th | Mean | Lowest | Highest |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thin Content | 10 | 26 | 36 | 87 | 87 | 48.9 | 0 | 100 |
How to read it: 26 is bottom-quartile, 36 is a typical page, 87 starts the upper quartile and 87 or above is the top 10%. These thresholds apply to this tool only.
The checks that fail most
The checks look past raw word count on purpose, because word count alone is the easiest number to game and the least informative. Text-to-HTML ratio catches pages that are mostly template. Subheadings and internal links catch pages with no internal organisation. Vocabulary variety catches text that repeats itself to reach a length.
| Check | Did not pass | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Healthy text-to-HTML ratio | 87% | Partial |
| Substantial word count | 72% | Hard fail |
| Above the thin-content floor | 53% | Hard fail |
| Sub-headings organize the page | 29% | Partial |
| Internal links for context | 23% | Partial |
| Supporting media / lists | 22% | Partial |
| Varied vocabulary (not repetitive) | 4% | Partial |
“Hard fail” means the check’s full weighting is lost; “partial” means only part of the score is. Rates are the share of scans in which the check ran and did not pass.
The weakest areas
This tool groups its checks into categories. The chart below shows how often each category was the lowest-scoring one in a scan — which area is most often the weak link. It is not the average score in that category; it is how often it came last.
“Content Depth” was the weakest area in 76% of scans.
What to fix first
Before adding words, decide whether the page should exist. Merging three thin pages into one substantial one is almost always better than padding all three, and it concentrates whatever authority they had. If the page does deserve to exist, the fastest real improvement is usually structure: subheadings that break the content into answerable parts.
A typical scan passes 4.1 of 7 checks and leaves 2.9 open items behind. What drags a score down is usually not one catastrophe but accumulated small omissions.
Run the Thin Content Checker on your own page
Month by month
The figures on this page are replaced at every refresh. At the end of each month a permanent edition is published for that month and never edited again — which is the only reason this series can be compared at all. One edition has been published so far; when the second lands this section will set the two months side by side.
| Edition | Median | vs. previous | Scored 80+ | Issues/run | Runs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| August 2026 | 36 | baseline | 28% | 2.9 | 1,437 |
Frequently asked questions
How many words does a page need?
There is no threshold, and any specific number you have been given was made up. What actually matters is whether the page answers what it promised completely. A definition page might do that in eighty words; a comparison of six products cannot do it in eight hundred. The check flags short pages because shortness correlates with incompleteness, not because length is a target.
Are category and tag pages thin content?
They usually score as thin, and quite often they are — but not always. A category page that only lists links is genuinely thin; one with an introduction explaining what the category covers and why is a legitimate landing page. If a listing page has nothing to say for itself, the honest options are to write something or to stop it being indexed.
Is duplicate content the same as thin content?
They are different problems that frequently travel together. Thin means there is not enough substance; duplicate means the substance is also somewhere else. A page can be long and duplicated, or short and entirely original. This tool measures the first and only notices the second indirectly, through repetitive vocabulary.
What is a good score on the Thin Content Checker?
In this dataset the median is 36/100, so scoring 36 puts you exactly in the middle. 87 is the start of the upper quartile and 87 or above is the top 10%; below 26 is the bottom quarter. Those thresholds are specific to this tool — the 25 measures in this dataset have very different medians, so 70 here and 70 elsewhere do not mean the same thing.
Which check fails most often on the Thin Content Checker?
“Healthy text-to-HTML ratio”, which did not pass in 87% of scans. The costliest failures, though, are the ones scored as hard fails — this tool has 2, the most common being “Substantial word count” at 72%.
Questions that govern the whole series — how the sample is collected, how sites are anonymized, how often the figures are refreshed — are answered in the methodology on the hub.
Using this data
The figures, tables and charts on this page are free to reuse under CC BY 4.0; the only condition is a link back to this page. Suggested citation: SeoMods — Thin Content Checker benchmarks, 2 September 2026, https://seomods.com/seo-score-benchmarks/thin-content-checker. If you need to cite by date, use the August 2026 edition instead: this page changes at every refresh and that one never does.